Benjamin Britten

Bad Gays

Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

History

4.6 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2020

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The composer Benjamin Britten was a central figure of 20th century music; and the national composer that Britain had been searching for since the death of Henry Purcell in 1695. He never shook his Communist and pacifist sympathies –– even as he rose to the highest levels of elite British cultural production. A fervent pacifist, antinationalist, and homosexual –– with a deep, complex, and troubling love of children –– Britten, through the strength of his music and through the nation’s desire to have a musical hero of its own, became an utterly unlikely national celebrity. Content warning: this episode contains discussions of sexual attraction to children. Visit our website at badgayspod.com for an episode archive, T-shirts, and a link to our Patreon. ----more---- SOURCES: Bridcut, John. Britten’s Children. Main edition. London: Faber and Faber, 2006. Britten, Benjamin. Peter Grimes. London: BBC, 1969. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MyBUetbE38&t=1705s. Conlon, James. “Message, Meaning and Code in the Operas of Benjamin Britten." Hudson Review LXVI, no. 3 (Autumn 2013). https://hudsonreview.com/2013/10/message-meaning-and-code-in-the-operas-of-benjamin-britten/. Kildea, Paul. Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century. Allen Lane, 2013. Ryan, Hugh. When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019. Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we start, just a quick content note to say that today's episode contains discussions of childhood sexual abuse.
0:21.6	Hello and welcome to Badgays, a podcast all about evil and complicated queer people in history.
0:26.7	My name's Hugh Lemmy. I'm a writer and author. And I'm Ben Miller, a writer, researcher,
0:31.0	and member of the board of Berlin's Shulis Museum. Last week we discussed a very senior
0:35.8	British politician, Jeremy Thorpe, who was implicated in a conspiracy to murder plot.
0:40.7	Who are we talking about this week, Ben?
0:43.1	Well, we're going to be returning to the highest levels of mid-century English cultural and political production, but in a slightly different way.
0:54.5	And I want to begin by painting another one of my pictures.
0:59.5	Chaos sings the writer.
1:01.3	Chaos and sickness.
1:02.6	What if all were dead?
1:04.2	In his white hat and suit, sweating under face paint, distorting the shape of his mustache,
1:08.9	he leans on his white cane.
1:12.4	O perilous, sweet death.
1:18.9	Socrates knew. Socrates told us, does beauty lead to wisdom, Fadris? Yes, but to the senses.
1:25.3	Can poets take this way, then? For senses lead to passion, Fadres. Passion leads to knowledge,
1:28.7	knowledge to forgiveness, to compassion with the abyss.
1:35.1	Should we then rejected, Fadris, the wisdom poets crave, seeking only form and pure detachment,
1:40.2	simplicity and discipline, but this is beauty, Fadris, discovered through the senses,
1:44.1	and senses lead to passion, Fadres, and passion to the abyss. He closes his eyes,
1:46.0	his rused cheeks slump, in the distance, a boy dances in the waves. And now, Fadris, I will
1:53.0	go, he sings, and you will stay here, and when your eyes no longer see me, then go home too.
	...

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